Risen from the Earth
by radialarch
Summary: The Winter Soldier has a mission in the Underworld. He finds himself along the way. / Steve/Bucky. Orpheus AU.


**Title**: Risen from the Earth  
**Pairing**: Steve/Bucky  
**Rating**: T  
**Warnings**: canon-typical violence  
**Spoilers**: none  
**Wordcount**: 4330  
**Summary**: The Winter Soldier has a mission in the Underworld. He finds himself along the way.

**A/N**: A vague riff off the Orpheus myth. Love to Sara for looking this over.

* * *

They pull you out of cryo, and you go.

They give you a new weapon — a knife, gleaming a faint blue-gray in the dull light. You tuck it into your belt and feel it vibrating lightly against your hip.

Someone is shuffling his feet. "Sir, you're aware that this has never been tested—"

"Enough!" The man snaps. "Will it kill Rogers for good?"

Rogers. Your target's name is Rogers, Steven G. Died two days ago, a blond head though the crosshairs.

"Th-theoretically, it should prevent him from recrossing the Acheron—"

"Then that's all I need. Give him the coin."

Someone presses something heavy and round into your right palm. You clutch your fingers around it, automatic.

"Go on, my soldier," the man says, a hint of laughter in his voice. "March into Hell."

—

The fog rises around you as you walk. It makes the back of your neck tingle, even though they'd told you there would be no danger.

"You think it's really empty?" someone had said as they prepped your arm. "I mean, you hear things—the Furies—"

"Naw, I heard it's really simple," another had scoffed. "Straight in and out."

"Still. Gotta be a lot of ghosts down there."

"Well, 's why we're using him, isn't it? What ghost's gonna recognize him?"

The only sound you can hear is your own footsteps, your breaths coming shallow beneath your mask. The knife hums at your side, the only warm thing in a place nearly as cold as cryo.

You keep walking, down, down, down.

—

The sounds of the river creep upon you, softly at first, then growing until it fills your ears, crashes inside your skull. As you pick your way through the mist, the pebbles under your boots grow slicker with dampness until you have to focus on every step to stop yourself from falling.

The river itself comes into view with a roar, sprays of blackish water splashing onto the bank. You take a quick step back before it can touch you and look around for—for something—

A form is gliding towards you. You blink, and it resolves into the ferry, bumping softly onto the riverbank.

"What do we have here?" The ferryman asks, cocking his head at you. "Fare?"

You raise your fist, drop the coin into the man's bony hand.

The man raises it to his mouth and bites it, suddenly. "Oh, it's been a long time since I've had a genuine passenger," he crows. "Come, then, darling, I'll take you across."

You step into the boat. The wood creaks under your weight but holds steady, and the man nudges you both onwards with a gentle splash.

—

Here's what you know: you are called the Winter Soldier. You have one arm of flesh and bone and another made of metal, but they are both equally good at killing.

You know how to breathe out and pull the trigger between beats of your heart, and which ribs to slide a knife between to take away a life. You know the exact angle to twist your wrist to break each bone in a human body, and how long you must wrap your fingers around a throat before the person underneath goes limp.

(Nobody has ever asked you who you are. That is one thing you do not know.)

—

"You mortals do enjoy making trouble for yourself, don't you," the ferryman says as you bump into the opposite bank. "Can never let the natural order be."

You don't say anything in reply, just get to your feet and start to leave; but the man grips your upper arm as you pass by.

"But then, you're an interesting case," the man says, peering into your eyes. "You're already half a ghost yourself."

The man's own eyes are very blue. A shiver of unease prickles down your spine, and you jerk your arm away.

"I'm going to enjoy this!" the man shouts at your back as you leave footprints along the muddy shore. The fog swallows the man long before it silences his ringing laughter.

—

On this side of the river, the wind is picking up. You bow your head against it, but it slices into the seams of your clothing and numbs the exposed parts of your face. You've tracked targets in the depths of winter, through snow and ice of the tallest mountains, and it's never been like this — unforgiving, unending.

But there's someone at the edge of your perception. He's a fleeting touch on the inside of your elbow, and the brush against your hand when you've taken a fall; he presses warm fingers to your forehead when it's time for you to sleep, when everything else is cold and you're frosting over.

You don't know your name, but you know his is _Steve_.

—

Sleep is very blue, and relentless. It takes hold of your limbs in a tight, icy grasp. You can't move and you can't breathe and you close your eyes.

But Steve is here with you – a pale and wavering memory, but Steve. He takes your face in his (small, transparent) hands and says, solemnly, "Bucky."

He says _Bucky_ and that doesn't mean anything to you, but it must mean something to him because his voice is choked and desperate.

"Bucky," he says, and "you gotta remember," and "please." He presses his forehead to yours and you can almost, almost feel his short panicked breathing on your face.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes," Steve says, "and you're my best friend."

And you think, "Okay." You can be that, for Steve.

—

You remember, a day in 1958:

They hand you a gun and send you out into the world.

You wait in a small motel room, your hand on your rifle and your eye to the scope; you stay still, for minutes, for hours. Time doesn't mean anything to you.

Then it's night and you're blinking awake, and someone's pushed your hair out of your eyes, very gently. You pull the rifle close to your chest and find your target, a clean outline against the yellow of a window.

You squeeze the trigger and it reverberates like a noise against your ear, a muffled voice you think you should know.

When you come back, they ask if you've finished and you say yes. They don't ask who you are and you don't tell them.

(You don't know yourself, in any case. All you have to hold onto is a name.)

—

The air smells damp and cold, and it's gone deathly still. You think you can hear the clicking of something on rock. Out of the shadows comes deep, low vibrations that might nearly be a growl.

You put one hand to the hilt of your knife and sweep your gaze around, but there's nothing. You blink against the darkness and keep walking, but your nerves are taut, your muscles tensed.

When you were eight, there was a rabid dog—

When you were—

You hear your own breaths loud and clear in your ear, and beyond that the hum of the knife. There's an intensity to it now that vibrates clear through you, through teeth and bone.

The wind picks up, suddenly, with a mournful howl; the shadows slink back down to the edges of the path. Your heart is pounding but you look around and see nothing but you.

—

The way is getting darker. The knife murmurs, dull, lighting up a path by your tired feet.

When you look up, there are ghosts — too many of them, looking at you with dead, washed-out eyes. They reach out to you with unformed hands as if you have something they need.

—

You met Steve Rogers in a Brooklyn back alley. He was the skinniest kid you'd ever seen, on his knees and spitting blood out of his mouth, but he still lifted his chin up and said, "C'mon, is that all you got?" to a boy twice his size, and before you knew it you were shouting, "Hey, what's going on?"

"It's okay," Steve said, grinning with red-streaked teeth, "I got this," but you marched into the alleyway anyway and the other kid ran, like the coward he was.

"Picking fights with guys bigger 'n you, not a good idea," you said, offering him a hand up.

"He was harrassin' a girl," Steve said, unapologetic. "Couldn't just watch." He brushed his hand off his thigh before taking your hand.

You laughed disbelievingly at that, but Steve just looked at you and his hand was warm, and it made you offer solemnly, "Bucky Barnes."

"Steve Rogers," he said, "Nice to meet you," and you thought, fleetingly, _Steve Rogers, there's somethin' about you_.

—

You wake up and wake up and you are not _Bucky_, not yet. You hold the name inside you and it might be growing, but it is still so, so small.

You crouch on top of a theater and watch people walk by, in twos and threes along the heated sidewalk. There's a car coming down the road, and through the windshield you spot your target. You put your finger on the trigger, aim for the tire on the driver's side.

The car jerks off course with a screech, spinning into a shop with red-bricked walls. You nod and begin the pack up, but there's a touch on your wrist.

Steve is standing at your elbow, nearly drowned in the sunlight. His mouth is downturned, sad.

"This isn't you, Bucky," you hear him say. "You've gotta get out."

You wake up.

—

Sometimes, you fall into sleep and Steve doesn't come with you. Sometimes, it's dark and you're all alone, just the cold sliding over your toes and into your body.

You're not Bucky, then. You're not anything.

—

There were days, when Steve wasn't sick and you knew the girl in the ticket booth, and you'd take Steve by the arm and sneak into the movies. You'd creep into the darkened room just as the pictures started flickering over the screen, and sit at the very back, the two of you, with your arm across Steve's back.

When you were looking up at those pictures, at men in wide-lapelled suits and women with glittering jewels at their throats, you didn't have to be you, for those few hours. You could be anyone, adventuring all across America – the entire world.

But Steve was always by your side, his shoulder bumping into yours, and when the lights came on you were glad to be Bucky again.

—

You sleep on the cold, hard ground, and you think:

Sometimes they take you out of the box but you don't wake up. Your body remembers how to carry a rifle and how to follow orders, and you watch like a dream: as your hands curl around the barrel, as you straighten your shoulders and march out.

There's blood on your clothing but it is not your blood. You squeeze the trigger and a man drops as he's pouring himself a drink.

"Bucky," Steve says. You remember Steve: small and skinny with his hair falling into his eyes.

"Bucky," Steve says, and his brows are furrowed. "Wake up, Buck. Wake up."

—

Once, when work was over, you came home to Steve with a cheap bottle of liquor. You sat on the fire escape, high over Brooklyn, and watched lights blink over the city as you passed the bottle back and forth.

At the end of the bottle, the flush was high on Steve's face and he was swaying, a little. He shivered in the breeze and you wrapped your jacket around his shoulders. When he settled into it, the collar rose around his ears and the sleeves covered his hands, leaving only the tips of his fingers showing.

"Hey," Steve said, a little sleepily, putting a hand on your knee; and when you turned he was close, very close. "This is nice."

And you knew that sometimes people drank to forget themselves, but you couldn't ever forget what you weren't supposed to be. So you looked at Steve leaning against your side – at his mouth, still a little wet from the drink – and you never tilted your head down to meet his.

"Yeah," you said instead. "Should do it again."

And you did, but you were always so careful to remember.

—

Here's what you know: you are called the Winter Soldier but that is not who you are. Someone's settled in your head and he calls you Bucky.

The only thing you are sure of is Steve. Steve was important to you — is important. You think you need him and you chase him through the paths of the underworld.

—

The ghosts ask, "Who are you," in low, wistful voices, and you remember:

You are in a small apartment waiting for your target. You sit on a hard-backed chair and watch the shadows drift across the couch.

When the door opens you are ready with a sharp, sharp knife in your hand. (The knife hums.) You slit his throat and the blood spills over your fingers.

The warmth is nothing like when Steve reaches for your hand.

"Don't look," Steve says, urgent. "You can't go back."

You don't know where you're supposed to go, but you close your eyes anyway.

(Or you open them. You can't tell the difference anymore.)

(It's so dark.)

—

You are not Bucky, and you know this because:

Bucky Barnes had two hands both warm and full of life, and they shook when they touched Steve's bony shoulders, shuddering uncontrollably as he coughed and coughed. You have one warm hand and one cold and metallic, and neither of them move an inch on the rifle when you've killed.

Bucky Barnes was only human, gaining wounds and scars through the fire of combat, though he always laughed it off. You are half-machine and you don't know if that makes you more than, or less — you do not remember how to laugh.

Bucky Barnes had his Steve to follow until death. Your Steve follows you, and he's only a memory.

So you are not Bucky. But you think you might know him, a little.

—

When Steve's ma died, you wanted Steve to come home with you, leave the house that was too empty and too big for him now. But he squared his shoulders and refused — he wouldn't have been Steve, otherwise — so you snuck in long after the evening had turned dark and chilly instead.

Steve was asleep on the sofa, face half-mashed into the cushions and sticky with tears. His mouth was slightly open and his thin chest rose and fell with each rattling breath.

You unpacked a blanket for Steve, spread it carefully over him. He clutched his hand into the fabric as you pulled it over his torso, but otherwise he didn't stir, still deep in sleep.

You stretched yourself out on the floor, then, looking up at Steve's face. There was still a faint line between his eyebrows and one of his arms was falling off the couch, dangling beneath the blanket.

You stayed because he was all alone; because you were the only one he had left, and that mattered, that was important. You didn't take his hand but you wanted to make sure, that there'd always be someone around who was willing.

In the morning you woke up stiff and Steve was looking at you. "Can't believe you slept on the floor," he said, offering you a hand up. His hair was mussed and falling into his eyes, and he yawned, briefly. "It was a stupid thing to do."

You took his hand and sat up, leaning on the couch so your shoulder bumped into Steve's knees. "Well, you know me," you grinned. "I do a lot of those."

You sat there, together, as the morning went by, and at the end of it Steve said, very quiet, "Thank you, Buck."

You still remember that: the hush of Steve's voice, and the way he looked at you, sideways.

You remember that.

—

There's a cliff-face, tall and dark, and your feet slip out from underneath. You remember:

They put you in the chair and the rubber between your teeth and they pull you down, down, to the place where you didn't remember anything, where you _aren't_ anything. You gasp and you scream but they won't let go.

"Stay with me, Buck," Steve says, very close to your ear. "I've got you, just stay with me."

Steve takes your hand in his warm, warm grasp and doesn't let go. His thumb strokes gently over your wrist as you scream, even when your hands clench tight and you must be squeezing much too hard. (You remember: Steve has small hands, with knuckles always bruised from one thing or another.)

You close your eyes and it'd be easy, to forget. It'd be easy to let yourself fall back into nothing like they want you to — to stop remembering.

But Steve has your hand in his hand and he needs you to remember. So you hold on to him and hold onto the pieces of Bucky you have found, even through the screaming.

You don't look down.

Your hand is scraped raw and you are gasping, but you are sprawled on flat ground and you are, improbably, alive. You've bitten your tongue near through; you take off your ruined mask and wipe away the blood from your mouth, and push yourself to your feet.

—

You never wanted to go to war. You'd already lived out one in the streets of Brooklyn, spilled blood in your fight to keep Steve alive. The war in Europe was a pale, distant thing, and the army sure as hell wasn't going to take Steve — so you weren't going, either.

When the letter came you read it twice, perched on a fire escape, and then tucked it into your breast pocket. It sat there, very heavy, while you tried to figure out how to tell Steve.

Steve already had two 4Fs. Everything about this was wrong.

"Listen, Steve—"

_I have to leave_.

In the end, you just slid the letter across the table. Steve read it with furrowed brows and when he looked up he just said, "Oh."

"Steve, I didn't want—"

"No, this is good," he told you, and he was trying for a smile. "If they've got you, war won't last much longer."

You held onto that near-smile, all through basic. You came home a sergeant, and you made yourself remember: the sooner you won the war, the sooner you could come home.

—

The war must not be over, because you're not home.

(Home is warm. Home is a place where your bones don't ache and no one is a weapon.)

—

There are so many ghosts, clustered around you. They brush against you like cold wisps of wind and their murmur is an ocean, something you can drown in.

There's a knife in your belt and you don't know what for. You don't know who you are but you're beginning to.

—

You never did end up coming home to Steve; he came to you.

Hydra took you prisoner, then they just took you. They strapped your body to a lab bench and asked you questions but all you could answer was your name-rank-serial number, and those you gave to them, over and over again until your lungs gave out.

When Steve came he wasn't even himself, wearing a new body and uniform. For a second you thought you'd finally died, before he said, "Bucky," frantic, and you were so tired but you could never be too tired to recognize Steve's voice.

You recognize it now, when a ghost reaches up to you and says, "Bucky?"

—

You pull the knife out of your belt and grasp it tight. It's stopped singing, and that's important, somehow. You look at Steve, the thin wavering ghost of him trying to touch you, and the way his hands can't quite reach your skin.

The Steve in your head stirs, and for a moment it's like your vision's doubled before it settles back, and Steve looks back, small and skinny but whole.

"Bucky," he says, "You're not dead. You're not, you're _not_."

It's hard to push sounds out of your throat. "Steve," you manage, and lay down the knife at Steve's feet. Its glow fills Steve's face with a faint light, and you say, "I—"

_I—_

Steve waits. You close your mouth, open it again, and finally gesture at the knife and say, "For you."

Steve says, quietly, "Thank you."

You try to give him a smile. It sits strangely but not wrongly on your face.

—

"Listen," Steve says. "You can't stay."

You've known that since Steve had said, panicked, _you're not dead_. It's tiring to get to your feet all the same. "Where do I go?" you say, and it hurts, to ask.

Steve points. Very far in the distance, there's a place where the darkness rises up into gray, a spot of light against the sky.

"Don't look back," Steve says, raising a hand to your face. You feel the barest of brushes against your cheek. "Do you hear me? You can't look back."

—

You leave Steve behind. Steve fades back into the crowd and you don't watch him go.

It's hard going, at first. The ghosts slide out of your way but they are endless, shifting and sliding across the field, across your way. They are so cold and you've burned up your supply of warmth long ago.

You walk forward, following the fog of your breath. There's movement at the corners of your eyes but you remember, _don't look_.

—

After the rescue — after Steve had asked, as if you could ever resist following him — you watched Steve even harder than before.

Steve may have seemed different: taller, with strong new lungs and sturdy bones. But you knew better, that underneath all that he was still the same Steve, forever tumbling into fights he might not be able to win. Only this time, losing didn't mean just a knocked-out tooth and a blackened eye; this time, he couldn't afford to lose.

So you watched him as he ran into fire, fought Hydra agents with only a shield on his arm; you cradled a rifle in your hands and you watched him, didn't dare stop.

—

There's a shadow ahead of you, small and light. It nudges aside the ghosts in your path until you can see a way forward, and bounds ahead too quick to see.

There's something familiar about the shape of it, reminding you of flashes of sun and bare feet on asphalt. You shake your head, because that's a distraction, and you can't let yourself lose focus here.

You have to get out. Steve wants that, and you wonder if you do, too.

You shake away everything else, and keep going.

—

You remember the cold of Europe. The commandos would light fires to chase it away, when the darkness came, though it still seeped in at the edges.

In the firelight Steve looked a different kind of being: his profile softened and his hair burnished bright. You would already have followed him anywhere, but the sight lit something else in you, something that burned in the softest part of your belly. You wanted to crawl into him, so completely that his bones were your bones and his breath was your breath — so you could feel the beat of his heart inside your own veins.

You didn't need to let yourself be taken, because you were already gone.

—

The path gets rougher as you climb up, pebbles grinding underfoot. You stumble and your palms are bloody, your knees torn and stinging. The darkness is lifting up here, and you can see the trail you're making as you go, wet smudges pressed against stone.

You're not sure when your legs give out, but you grit your teeth and pull yourself forward. You're so close — there's a circle of light leading up, and you hook your fingers around the edge and ignore the fresh blood spilling from your torn fingers.

A hand reaches down. "Here," someone says.

You stare at the hand, with its blunt fingers and scarred knuckles. There's something about it that rings familiar, and you reach for it with a tired hand.

When you've hauled yourself up far enough, you finally see the stranger's face, smudged in dirt. It's a face of a child just growing into manhood — he grins, and the expression's got the cocky tinge of someone who still thinks he's invincible.

"Who are you," you ask, even though your tongue's nearly too tired to shape itself into words.

"Pal," he says gently. "You know me."

You look at him, unfolding himself in the light, and you find that you do, between one moment and the next.

"Bucky," you start to say, and then the ground is crumbling underneath your feet. Your balance tips backwards, and you close your teeth around a scream.

"No!" someone shouts, very familiar, and your shoulders jerk but you don't look back—

And you're falling—

—

Your mouth, your eyes are full of mud. You cough and cough and the sound reverberates in your ears.

"Bucky?" a voice says, and you wipe your face to find Steve kneeling by your side — covered in mud and his teeth chattering, and his shoulders still as wide as you remember. "Bucky."

"Steve," you gasp. The name come out well-shaped, instinctive.

Steve pulls you up by the shoulders, not flinching when his hand touches metal. "I thought you were dead," he says, and then he's kissing you, his teeth clicking against yours like he can't get close enough. "But I couldn't find you."

Steve's mouth is warm, even warmer than the rest of him. You look at him and grin, even though your face aches to do it. "Good thing I found you, then."

—

You are not called the Winter Soldier anymore. Steve calls you _Bucky_ and you do, too.


End file.
